20

The Mongol Empire and

inter-civilizational exchange
michal biran

In the early thirteenth century, Chinggis Khan and his heirs built the largest
contiguous empire the world has ever seen, an empire that at its height
stretched from Korea to Hungary, from Burma and Iraq to Siberia. The
Chinggisids not only conquered the whole Eurasian steppe, the home of the
nomads, but they also subsumed under their rule three other civilizations:
the Chinese, whose centre and hinterland came under their rule by 1279; the
Islamic, whose erstwhile centre, Baghdad, was conquered in 1258, after a
large share of the eastern Islamic lands had already fallen; and since 1241, the
Orthodox Christian outer realms, though not its centre, Byzantium itself.
Moreover, as the only superpower of the thirteenth century, the Mongols
had a noticeable impact on regions and civilizations outside their purview,
such as Japan, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Muslim Middle
East, and much of Europe.
The Mongols, a group of demographically marginal nomads, were able to
create such a huge empire only by fully mobilizing the resources – both
human and material – that they extracted from the regions under their
control. More specifically, the formation of the empire, its continued expan-
sion, and the establishment of its administration entailed a vast mobilization
of people, goods, techniques, institutions, texts and ideas throughout its
territory and farther afield. This process constituted the first step towards a
robust inter-civilizational exchange.
Unprecedented human mobility informed the unified and constantly
growing empire (1206–60). It continued on a smaller yet highly significant
scale when the polity was divided into four khanates, each a regional empire
headed by Chinggis Khan’s descendants. The Khanate of the Great Khan,
later known as the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), ruled over China, Mongolia,

I would like to thank Tom Allsen for his valuable comments.

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 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

Tibet and Manchuria, and enjoyed a nominal, though not uncontested,

primacy over its counterparts. The Ilkhanate (1260–1335), literally ‘the empire
of the submissive khans’, ruled in modern Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Turkmeni-
stan, parts of Anatolia, and the Caucasus. The Chaghadaid Khanate held
power in Central Asia, from eastern Xinjiang (China) to Uzbekistan, until
Timur’s rise to power in 1370, and over eastern Central Asia through the late
1600s. The Golden Horde (1260–1480) governed the northwestern Eurasian
steppe, from the eastern border of Hungary to Siberia, as well as the Russian
principalities. Despite the many, often bloody, disputes between the four
polities, they retained a strong sense of Chinggisid unity. In the mid-
fourteenth century all four khanates were embroiled in political crises that
led to the collapse of the Ilkhanate (1335) and Yuan China (1368), while
considerably weakening the steppe khanates. The fall of the Yuan is generally
deemed to be the end of the Mongol period, although from a Muslim
vantage point, the ‘Mongolian moment’ sometimes extends until the Timur-
ids’ demise in 1500 (see Map 20.1).
Although the Mongol era was relatively short in imperial terms, the
Chinggisids’ impact on world history has been much more enduring. The
primary reasons for this were their active promotion of inter-civilizational
contacts and the transformations – not always intended – of religious and
ethnic identities that were triggered by their population movements. More-
over, it is hard to ignore the imperial legacy that the Mongols bequeathed to
ambitious dynasties across Eurasia, and a host of functioning institutions.
This contribution holds true both for empires that paid homage to the
Chinggisids (Timurid and Uzbek Central Asia, Qing China and Mughal India)
and for those that ardently denied any such debt (Ming China, Muscovy and
the Ottomans).
Running the gamut from the “Tatar Yoke” to the Pax Mongolica, the
question of the empire’s influence on world history has been debated for
centuries in a discourse that is often freighted with strong nationalist under-
tones. The merciless destruction that the Mongols left in their wake is still
what most people associate with the empire, and there is no reason to pretend
it did not happen. Nevertheless, their legacy is much more complex, as they
also triggered a long-lasting cultural effervescence; a thriving artistic and
scientific exchange; booming international trade; new and abiding forms of
legitimacy, jurisprudence and imperial culture; and a host of religious, ethnic
and political changes. What is more, the Mongols integrated Eurasia on an
unprecedented scale, a globalization of the Old World that contributed to the
discovery of the New World and helped shape the early modern period.

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536

Europe
Venice 1237-42
Russia
Moscow
Kiev
Bolgar Lake Baikal
Mongolia
Khanate of the Golden Horde
M
Bla Japan
ed
ck
Se 1224

it e
a 1224 Karakorum
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1236
an
an
Changdu
an Chaghadaid Kh
e

Caspian Sea
Se at Beijing
a Khanate 1219
1207 re
1215 1274

G
he
1219
Africa Damascus 1276

t
Bukhara Samarkand 1281

of
1260

re
Baghdad Kashgar Kaifeng Hangzhou

pi
1220

Em
1260
Ilkhan Empire
Khotan Southern Song Fuzhou
Lahore Tibet Lhasa
conquered
Chengdu
1279
Yangzhou PACIFIC
Ormuz 1296-1307 Guangzhou
OCEAN
Red Se

Delhi
Arabia
1285-8
a

Sultanate 1277
of Delhi
1257 South
Chaghadaid Khanate Burma China Sea
Pegu
Arabian India
Ilkhan Empire Khmer
Sea Bay of Bengal
Khanate of the Golden Horde

Empire of the Great Khan

1260 Date of campaign
INDIAN OCEAN

Map 20.1. The Mongol conquests and the Four Khanates

 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

The focus of this chapter is on the Mongols’ promotion of cultural,

religious and economic exchange. In addition, it will discuss the legacy that
they bequeathed to future empires. Before we proceed, though, let us set the
stage with a sketch of the Mongols’ imperial enterprise.

Empire building
In 1206, when Temüjin united the Mongolian tribes after more than two
decades of in-fighting and was enthroned as Chinggis Khan, he had no
intention of conquering the world. However, the ensuing spate of victories
convinced both Chinggis Khan and everyone else around him that he was
destined to rule the planet. The political fragmentation of Eurasia in the
centuries that preceded the Mongols’ rise and the emergence of post-
nomadic states in eastern, central and western Asia were contributing factors,
but Chinggis Khan’s policies – above all the creative use of the Inner Asian
cultural legacy and his pragmatic willingness to learn from others – merit the
lion’s share of credit behind the Mongols’ success.
The basis for supra-tribal unity in Mongolia was the legacy of the prior
steppe empires, most notably the Turks (c. 552–743), as these polities
bequeathed a religio-political ideology and templates for military organiza-
tion. Steppe ideology centred around the belief in Tengri (Heaven), the
supreme sky god, who conferred heavenly charisma (suu) and the right to
rule on earth to a single clan, each of whose members could be elevated to
the khaqanate – the supreme office of the ruler. As Tengri did not bestow his
mandate on every generation, its possession by the khaqan was confirmed by
triumph on the battlefield and by the shamanic apparatus. The sovereign had
certain shamanic functions, and his legitimacy was reinforced by controlling
the sacred territory of the Orkhon River in Central Mongolia, where the
Turks etched the Orkhon inscriptions and the Mongols built their capital,
Qara Qorum, some four hundred years later. Following the demise of the
Turks’ successors, the Uighurs in Mongolia (744–840) and the Khazars in the
western steppes (c. 618–965), no khaqan had tried to unite the steppe.
However, the ideology was merely held ‘in reserve’, waiting to be put to
fruition by future unifiers like Chinggis Khan.
More practical means behind the conquest’s success was the organization
of the army: Chinggis Khan retained the typical decimal unit that was
characteristic of former Inner Asian empires, in which armies were arranged
into units of ten and larger units based on powers of ten, but abolished its
linkage to the tribal system: the new Mongol units often combined people

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 michal biran

from different tribes and were led by Chinggis Khan’s nökers (personal allies),
rather than tribal chiefs. Chosen on the basis of merit and loyalty, this new
elite provided the Mongols with a most professional military leadership.
Moreover, the khan could confidently assign troops to fight on the extrem-
ities of Eurasia without fear of treason. Since every Mongol was a soldier
(women offered logistical support), this reorganization begat social revolu-
tion: The soldiers’ loyalty was transferred from tribe to commander and,
higher up the chain, to the Chinggisid family. Moreover, allegiance was
further buttressed by draconian disciplinary measures and booty. The rules
governing the behaviour in these units, together with the growing body of
legal precedents that Chinggis Khan ordered to register from 1206 onwards,
were probably the basis for the famous Jasaq (Turkic: Yasa) – the ever-
evolving law code ascribed to Chinggis Khan, which remained valid through-
out the empire in conjunction with local laws.
The decimal organization was also a convenient means for incorporating
new soldiers: During their campaigns, the Mongols eliminated existing
nomadic elites and reorganized their troops into units headed by their loyal
followers. This enabled them to impose a single, centralized authority across
the whole steppe and mobilize its chief military resource – mounted archers.
In turn, this system was broadened to include soldiers from the sedentary
population. As a result, the more the Mongols conquered, the more man-
power they had for their next conquests. As the troops advanced, the
Mongols built roads and bridges and seized arms, thereby laying the ground-
work for further expansion. In the process, they collected arms along with
artisans who were transferred eastward in the service of the empire.
Chinggis Khan also retained the Inner Asian institution of the Royal Guard
(keshig) that became the incubator of the military and administrative elite.
The guard was responsible for the khan’s personal security and general well-
being: its ranks included officers who were responsible for his food and drink,
garments, weapons, and herds; others were charged with writing his decrees
and recording his deeds. The keshig also carried out police functions and
served as the imperial crack troops. Its men were recruited from the decimal
units, as commanders were instructed to assign both their sons and top
warriors – regardless of their genealogy – to the elite guard. Consequently,
the keshig served as both a reservoir of potential hostages (to which sons of
subject rulers and high officials were later added) and a training centre for
future Mongol commanders.
This organization, the quality of the commanders, the loyalty of the troops
and their skill in mobile warfare, combined with meticulous operational

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 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

planning, were among the keys to the Mongol success. Another factor was
the devastation and massacres on an unprecedented scale that accompanied
the conquests. This violence should not be interpreted as wanton cruelty, for
it was a strategic ploy that went beyond psychological warfare. The destruc-
tion was a brutal yet effective means of compensating for the Mongols’
numerical inferiority and preventing future resistance: More specifically,
the empire ravaged much more territory than it kept, thereby creating a
wide belt of destruction around its borders. This buffer protected Mongol
territory from future incursions, facilitated the Mongols’ continuous expan-
sion and increased their pasture lands. At later stages of the conquest (e.g.
South China), the devastation was substantially reduced, as by then the
conquerors had realized that their subjects were more useful alive. In some
areas, the restoration was as potent as the wreckage.
Another major reason for the Mongol success was their willingness and
capacity to learn from others. A case in point was the Chinese and Iranian
siege engineers whose skills were used by the empire. For the campaign in
South China, it even built a navy. However, the Mongols’ eye for talent and
innovation was most conspicuous in the field of administration, where they
lacked not only numbers but experts and skills. As early as 1204, Chinggis
Khan adopted the Uighur script for writing Mongolian, thereby creating a
literate staff. Afterwards, he drew on experienced subjects to administer the
conquered territories.
The administration evolved with the empire’s growth and was system-
atized, first and foremost, by two of Chinggis’ heirs, the khans Ögödei
(r. 1229–41) and Möngke (r. 1251–9). While the bureaucracy’s lower echelons
were manned primarily by the subjected population, Mongols played a major
role in its upper levels, which were inherently patrimonial. The Central
Secretariat, a sort of Mongol government, evolved out of the keshig and its
members were personally loyal to the khan. The Secretariat was based in
Qara Qorum, the Mongol capital, which Ögödei erected in 1237. Its chief
priority was to secure resources for the empire’s functioning and continued
expansion.
For the most part, Mongol rule was direct. This was partly because many
of the elites were eliminated during the conquests. That said, former steppe
empires usually settled for indirect administration, leaving former elites to
govern their own lands. Mongol direct rule was administered by mobile
secretariats (xingsheng) that branched off from the central government. The
xingsheng indeed governed North China, Turkestan, and Northern Iran,
eventually serving as the nucleus for Yuan China, Ilkhanid Iran and the

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 michal biran

Chaghadaid administrations. Led by experienced non-Mongol administrators,

such as the Khwarizmian merchants Mahmud Yalawach and his son Mas‘ud
Beg or the Khitan Yelü Chucai, their main duties were census taking and tax
collection. The census, which was adopted from the Chinese, was the key
element in Mongol efforts to harvest their domains, as it was used to impose
taxes, recruit troops and labour and identify natural and human resources.
The Mongols usually retained existing taxes, but also tacked on the Qubchir
(contributions), a special levy to meet the rulers’ immediate needs, and later
the Tamgha, a commercial tax. The nomads also paid taxes and were rewarded,
above all, from the centrally collected and then redistributed booty.
The Mongol administration had a dual character in several respects: From
Ögödei’s time onwards, the military and civil administrations were mostly
separated. In addition, the Mongols often preferred double-staffing adminis-
trative posts, frequently pairing together home-grown and foreign officials.
This method is well-documented in the Yuan dynasty, but was apparently
also employed in the Ilkhanate. The idea was to have the two officials keep
each other in check, a technique that the Mongols were indeed very fond of.
Since the empire viewed the administration of all the sedentary lands –
whether in China, Turkestan or Iran – as basically the same (despite local
variants), they often exchanged administrative personnel.
In a number of cases, though, local dynasts were permitted to remain in
place and govern with the empire’s stamp of approval and under the
supervision of Mongolian-appointed imperial residents known as darughachi,
basqaq or shihna – a post inherited from the Qara Khitai. These officials also
_
served in directly administered territories. This indirect administration
existed mainly in regions north of the steppe: most prominently the Rus’
principalities, but also the northern tribes of Manchuria and Siberia and
various kingdoms on the khanates’ margins, such as Armenia, Georgia,
Anatolia, Tibet and Korea. These polities had to pay tribute to the Mongol
treasury, participate in the census, provide military units when required, and
send their leaders’ relatives to the imperial guards.
Communication across the vast empire was maintained by the Jam, the
mounted postal courier system. Though perhaps based on Khitan precedent,
the Jam was systematized by Ögödei: Each station was located about every
33 to 45 kilometres from the next, and provided horses, fodder and couriers
for authorized travelers who were able to cover about 350–400 kilometres a
day. This network enabled the khan to transmit his orders efficiently, acquire
information from the far reaches of the empire, and secure the roads for
ambassadors and merchants.

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 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

The khan’s attempts at centralization were balanced by the nomadic

conception of the empire as the common property of all the Chinggisids,
whereby the ruler was but primus inter pares. A prime example of this
mindset was the appanage (Qubi). During the conquest period, vast territor-
ies were parcelled out to various Chinggisids, including women. While the
central government administered the appanages, their revenues were for-
warded directly to their owners. In a similar vein, the mobile secretariats
were staffed with appointees of both the khan and the different princes, so
that the interests of the entire Chinggisid clan were taken into account.
Reforms to the administration were usually implemented in tandem with
new waves of expansion. One reason for this timing was that the government
had then secured funds for new campaigns, but it also stemmed from the
need for further expansion in order to gain the traditional Mongol elites’
consent for increased centralization. The empire’s expansion and centraliza-
tion reached their peak under Möngke, although even he failed to abolish the
appanages. The dismantlement of the united empire after Möngke’s death in
1259 – due to succession struggles, the sheer girth of the polity and the fact
that it had reached the steppe’s ecological borders – appreciably curtailed the
resources that each khanate could muster for further expansion. Apart from
South China, where the area’s wealth and prestige justified the great effort
needed for conquest, there was no significant Mongol expansion after the
empire’s dissolution. With respect to administration, local strategies became
more important to the four successor states, but Mongol institutions (such as
the keshig, Jam, and tax apparatus) were retained and the khanates continued
to exchange administrators.

Cross-cultural exchange
The immense size of the Mongol Empire encouraged cross-cultural ties both
within and beyond its borders, as no polity had hitherto commanded such a
large portion of Eurasia’s talent pool. However, as adeptly illustrated in the
seminal works of Thomas T. Allsen,1 the Mongols were not simply a passive
medium that enabled such contacts to take place. Instead, they were the
main agents who promoted and directed such contacts. What is more, they
served as a filter that determined which particular cultural elements would
be diffused across the continent. As a result, the Mongols’ nomadic culture

1 Especially Thomas T. Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge

University Press, 2001). See also Allsen’s other works in the further reading.

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 michal biran

had an enormous impact on what the sedentary civilizations exchanged. This

connection was initiated by the Mongols’ invasion of Turkestan in the 1220s,
which drew on the human and material resources of northeast Asia.
Following this campaign, the Mongols returned home with talent and
material goods from the Muslim world. In fact, the process of empire
building, which as aforementioned involved a massive flow of human and
material resources, was often the first stage of cross-cultural ties. Since the
Chinggisids regarded skilled individuals as a form of booty to be distributed
across the empire and amongst the family, myriads of people were trans-
ferred across Eurasia to provide for the empire’s needs – military, adminis-
trative and cultural.
The first and most potent catalyst for this mobilization was the army, as
the Mongols appropriated the defeated and submitted populations – both
nomad and sedentary – and organized them into decimal units, which were
sent to wage war across the continent. In turn, the advance of this formidable
army instigated a mass flight of people, as throngs of refugees from all classes
and professions sought to escape the approaching storm. Furthermore, the
empire transferred thousands of farmers and artisans to repopulate and
revive the devastated areas. The Mongols also looked for experts in fields
as varied as administration, military technology, trade, religion, craftsman-
ship, science and entertainment. The recruitment of professionals was sys-
tematized as early as the late 1230s by means of a census in which people
were classified according to vocational skills. Later on, the different khanates
competed for and exchanged specialists for the purpose of optimizing their
sedentary lands’ economic and cultural wealth and enhancing their kingly
reputation. Additionally, the Mongols’ reputation for rewarding loyal retain-
ers, their encouragement of trade, and their religious pluralism attracted
many gifted people to Chinggisid courts.
Dating back to the time of Chinggis Khan, the Mongol administration’s
recruitment of foreign specialists encouraged further mobilization and
exchange. This policy was fine-tuned in Yuan China (where the demographic
imbalance between rulers and ruled was far greater than in other regions), as
a special category of semuren (‘people of various kinds’, i.e. non-Mongols and
non-Chinese) was created for the many foreigners who played a significant
role in the bureaucracy. With respect to privileges, the semuren outranked the
local Chinese subjects and were second only to the Mongols themselves. The
empire preferred immigrants from nomadic and post-nomadic empires such
as those of the Khitans, Uighurs, or Khwarazmians because they were not
only well-versed in the laws of the cities, but had connections to the steppe.

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 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

That said, the case of Marco Polo epitomizes the fact that other talented
people were also welcome. For the purpose of winning over the loyalty of
these newcomers, the Mongols sought to give them ‘a taste of home’,
importing foreign (mostly Muslim) food, medicine and entertainment to,
say, Yuan China. While the situation in China is far better-documented than
in other khanates, there is evidence of a certain presence of Far Eastern food,
medicine, knowledge and entertainment in Mongol Iran and apparently the
steppe khanates.
Most of what was conveyed throughout the empire was not the Mongols’
own culture, but rather elements from that of their sedentary subjects.
However, it was the Chinggisids who initiated the bulk of these exchanges.
The prime movers of this culture were imperial agents, including diplomats,
merchants, administrators, artisans, soldiers and hostages. The particular
cultural goods that diffused across Eurasia were those compatible with
Mongol norms and beliefs, such as medicine (i.e. healing), astronomy and
divination (reading of the heavens), geography and cartography (reading of
the earth), and thus the Mongols also promoted scientific transfers. In short,
the flow of people, ideas, and goods across Eurasia was determined to a large
extent by the Mongols’ affinities and needs.
The extensive mobilization along with growing trade (discussed below)
elicited a constant and voluminous movement of people, objects and ideas
throughout Eurasia. These developments not only encouraged integration,
but also inspired the creation of tools such as maps, multilingual dictionaries
and travel literature that facilitated further contacts both within and outside
the empire. For example, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, multi-
lingual dictionaries could be found not only in Iran and China, but also in
Armenia, Korea, North India, Egypt, Yemen and Crimea. Likewise, the two
most famous travelogues, those of Marco Polo and of Ibn Battuta, were
compiled by natives of Venice and Tangier (in North Africa), respectively.
The broadening of intellectual horizons under the Mongols finds expression
in, among other works, the first true history of the world, which was
compiled for the Ilkhans in Persia by their vizier Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 1318) – a
polymath of Jewish origin whose diverse interests included medicine, the-
ology, cooking, agriculture, history and geography. His Compendium of
Chronicles (Jāmi’ al-tawārīkh) offered not only a detailed history of the
Mongols from the pre-Chinggisid period to the reign of Qubilai’s successor,
Temür Öljeitü (r. 1307–1311), but also sections dedicated to the annals of
China, India, the Muslim world, the Jews, and the Franks, as well as
comprehensive genealogical and geographical appendixes (see Figure 20.1).

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 michal biran

Figure 20.1 The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad, miniature from the ‘Jāmi‘ al-tawārīkh
of Rashīd al-Dīn, c. 1307 (vellum) (Edinburgh University Library, Scotland. With kind
permission of the University of Edinburgh / Bridgeman Images)

Like the official histories in China, this tome was compiled by a team of
research assistants under the direction of Rashīd al-Dīn. The result was that
more information about the world (especially East Asia) became available in
the Muslim Middle East. Produced in the 1330s with the help of Muslim
cartographers, maps showing, inter alia, over a hundred places in western
Europe and over thirty in Africa, also increased knowledge about the world
in Yuan China. Correspondingly, the Europeans expanded the limits of their
own knowledge to Central, East, South and Southeast Asia, and Mongols and
Tatars were extolled in European literary works from The Canterbury Tales to
The Divine Comedy.
The main axes of Mongol cross-cultural exchange ran between the Sinitic
and Islamic civilizations, whereas the Christian Orthodox were a relatively
marginal partner. This was mostly because China and the Muslim world,
roughly equivalent in terms of culture, had much more to offer the Mongols
than did the hinterlands of Orthodox Christianity that came under the
empire’s control. Although the Russians supplied soldiers and artisans to
the far corners of Eurasia, they lacked both administrative personnel with
experience in serving nomadic rulers, and scientists – astronomers, geog-
raphers, mathematicians – of the stature of their prestigious Chinese, Central
Asian or Iranian counterparts. Furthermore, the Mongols shared the same
territory with their sedentary subjects in Iran, Central Asia and China, a fact
that encouraged all the parties to share economic resources and enhance

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 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

collaboration between their specialists. Conversely, the Mongols in the

Golden Horde remained on the steppe, at a distance from their Russian
subjects who were allowed to retain their own leaders. In addition, the
political alliance between Yuan China and Ilkhanid Iran encouraged mutual
exchange.
Another facet of cross-cultural exchange was the direct impact that Mon-
golian culture had on the Mongols’ subjects and neighbours. The unparal-
leled success of the Chinggisids spawned imitation throughout Eurasia in all
that concerned Mongolian names, clothes, hair style, diet and music. For
instance, elements of ‘Tatar dress’ (the medieval equivalent of blue jeans),
including fabric with small patterns, vests, and fur trim were adopted in
fourteenth-century England, in Yuan and Ming China, Ilkhanid and post-
Ilkhanid Iran, Chaghadaid and Timurid Central Asia, Mamluk Egypt and
North India. Tent furnishings such as rugs and tapestries, which the Mongols
used to make their palaces resemble tents, became high fashion among ruling
elites from the Pacific to the Adriatic. Pasta, originating in the Middle East
and favoured by the Mongols, spread into both China and Italy. Additionally,
Eurasian elites became well-versed in Chinggisid lore. Mongol social norms
also penetrated their subjects’ lives. For instance, levirate marriages, con-
demned by both Islamic law and Confucian ethics, were not rare in Ilkhanid
Iran and Yuan China. Lastly, following in the footsteps of their Mongol
counterparts, Persian and Korean princesses attained an elevated status and
became intimately involved in politics.
What were the ramifications of these cross-cultural ties in the post-
thirteenth century world? It appears as though not all the imported know-
ledge was received with open arms or had a lasting impact. A case in point is
intellectual property, such as medical theories. These sorts of goods did not
travel well, for they were closely linked to particular worldviews. Technolo-
gies disseminated more easily: the Mongols introduced gunpowder from
China to the West (at this stage, though, it was far from a military ‘game
changer’), while the art of distilling sugar arrived East from the Muslim
world. Material culture, especially art, was often well-received and adapted
to local conditions and tastes. The enduring influence of Chinese painting on
Persian art is a well-documented legacy of the Mongol period, which even
left its mark in Italy. Chinese-inspired Ilkhanid paintings and attendant
new methods surfaced throughout the lands of Islam, where they became
the standard for quality painting from the Ottoman Empire to Mughal
India. In sum, Mongol policies fostered Eurasian integration on an
unprecedented scale.

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 michal biran

Religious exchange
The Mongols neither preached nor tried to force their indigenous faith – a
complex polytheistic religion featuring Tengri, the sky God, and shamanic
practices – on their subjects. However, their policies and inclinations culmin-
ated in substantial religious transformations throughout Eurasia, most notably
the appreciable expansion of Islam and the flourishing of Tibetan Buddhism.
Even the empire’s harshest critics have praised its ‘religious tolerance’. In
fact, the Chinggisids sprang forth from a multi-religious environment where no
religion was considered exclusive. Moreover, they drew a distinction between
the purview of their own indigenous beliefs and that of world religions: the
former, now generally termed Shamanism, influenced the conditions in this
life; and world religions stressed the afterlife. These faiths were not seen as
competitors of Mongol Shamanism, but as another path to Tengri, the supreme
god who is revered by all religions, each in their own way. Spiritual leaders who
impressed Chinggis Khan, such as Changchun (1148–1227), the Daoist priest he
summoned to reveal the secret of longevity – received tax exemptions and
other privileges, in return for which they were supposed to pray for the leader’s
well-being. Under Chinggis’ heirs, this policy was broadened to include experts
from all the dominant faiths (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Islam and
Christianity). However, the privileges were not extended to the clergy of
religions without state power, such as Judaism, Manichaeism or Zoroastrian-
ism. The Mongols also quickly realized the benefit of securing acquiescence
through spiritual leaders and freedom of worship. As such, their relative
religious tolerance was a component of their realpolitik. In other words, it
was not only meant to soothe the deities, but to shore up their rule in the
subjugated lands. Chinggis Khan was ready to let everyone observe their own
rite, so long as it neither contravened the Mongol faith nor posed a threat to his
political standing. If it did pose a threat, as in the case of the shaman Teb Tengri,
who tried to divide Chinggis Khan’s family, he immediately had him killed.
Similarly, the Mongols did not hesitate to exploit religious sensitivities: when
Jebe and Sübetei reached Armenia in the 1220s, they painted crosses on their
troops’ shields as a tactical ploy against their Christian enemies. When the
Armenians lowered their guard upon seeing the holy symbol, the Mongol
generals immediately launched their attack.2

2 Peter Jackson, ‘The Mongols and the Faith of the Conquered’, in Reuven Amitai and
Michal Biran (eds.), Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World
(Leiden: Brill, 2005): 245–90.

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 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

As an imperial elite, the Mongols were a coveted prize for missionaries of

various creeds. So long as the empire was united, Tengri remained the sole
god of the ruling class. However, after its dissolution, each khanate adopted a
world religion either to ingratiate itself with the local population or, con-
versely, to accentuate its ideological independence. Muslim civilization, by
far the most mobile, mercantile and cosmopolitan society in the empire, had
already amassed considerable experience assimilating people, including many
nomads, and was the great winner in the conversion race: Adopted by three
out of the four Mongol khanates, Islam also expanded into other regions,
such as China, India, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Its unbridled expansion,
which began even before the Islamization of the khanates, was one of the
unintended ramifications of Mongol population movements.
The Islamization of the Mongol khanates – the Ilkhanate in 1295, and the
Golden Horde and Chaghadaids over the next fifty or so years – was a
gradual and complex process, stemming mainly from the deep ties between
the Chinggisids and their Muslim subjects, notably the Turkish officers and
soldiers comprising the bulk of the Mongol armies. Conversion stories
suggest that Mongol Islamization began with a royal conversion and then
spread downward. However, at least in the case of the Ilkhanate and the
Chaghadaids, the process seems to have started with the military’s rank and
file, primarily due to acculturation, intermarriage and charismatic preachers.
While spirituality’s role in conversion dynamics cannot be denied, political
motives must also be factored into the equation, at least with respect to the
leadership: For example, the Ilkhan Ghazan (1295–1304) embraced Islam
during his struggle for the crown, thereby winning the support of Muslim
segments in the army, not least a senior Mongol commander. Furthermore,
the annihilation of the caliphate meant that there was no longer a universal
leader of Islam (as the pope purported to be for Western Christendom). For
this reason, the Mongols were immediately in the running for the position
upon converting to Islam. Furthermore, they instantly merited a degree of
legitimacy in the eyes of their Muslim subjects that was beyond the reach of
any ‘infidel’. This may have been another incentive behind, or at least a
favourable by-product of, the conversion of the Ilkhanids. In contrast, the
Islamization of the Golden Horde’s rulers set them apart from their Christian
Russian subjects, while drawing them closer to the area’s Turks.
Another factor that promoted conversion was the Sufis. By dint of their
emphasis on respect for other religious traditions and their capacity for
‘magic’ (i.e. healing), Sufis were the impetus behind many royal conversions,
and have maintained their position as leading agents of Islamization ever

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 michal biran

since. Royal conversions and the campaigns against non-believers that usu-
ally ensued (such as the persecution of Buddhism in Iran during Ghazan’s
reign) further consolidated Islam’s position in the Mongol khanates. While
most of the population in the Ilkhanate was already Muslim, the conversion
of the Chaghadaid and Golden Horde’s khans enabled Islam to penetrate the
steppes of Central Asia and eastern Europe. By the mid-1300s, the Islamiza-
tion of the Chinggisids gave rise to a new Turco-Mongolian elite between the
Tian Shan mountains (in Kyrgyzstan and China) and the Volga. This group
practised Islam, spoke Turkish, and honoured the traditions of the Mongol
Empire. It is difficult to recall another era in which such a vast expanse of
land shared so much in terms of language, religion, and culture.
Mongol China never embraced Islam, but the Muslim presence therein
expanded considerably during this period. Muslims arrived both as con-
scripts, not least the thousands of relocated artisans, and of their own
volition, mainly merchants or experts who often found jobs in the Yuan
administration. Prominent officials, such as Sayid Ajjal (d. 1283), Qubilai’s
governor of Yunnan, attracted many co-religionists to the region. Lastly, a
few Mongol princes and their troops converted to Islam as well.
Although less directly, the Mongols also pushed Islam into the Indian
subcontinent, mostly in the form of several waves of Central Asian refugees
fleeing the army of Chinggis Khan and later upheavals in the Chaghadaid
Khanate. Taking a page out of the Mongol attitude towards human talent,
several Delhi sultans actively enticed Muslim religious scholars, scientists,
merchants and soldiers into their realm. These immigrants enhanced the
religious prestige of the newly established Delhi sultanate and bolstered its
expansion into southern India. The growth of maritime trade also led to the
establishment of sizeable Muslim communities in Indian ports, especially
along the Gujarat coast. Some of these communities later played a key role in
the conversion of other regions.
More indirectly still was the Mongols’ part in the Islamization of South-
east Asia and Africa. Since the main catalysts were traders, the thriving
commerce in the Mongol Empire galvanized this process. Marco Polo
observed that the kingdom of Perlak in northern Sumatra ‘is so much
frequented by the Saracen merchants that they have converted the natives
to the law of Muhammad’. As in China and India, the Muslim faith began
to thrive in Africa long before the Mongol period, especially in Mali,
Zanzibar and Zimbabwe. The Islamization of these regions was far from
complete in the thirteenth century, but Islam continued to make strides in
most of them.

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 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

The Mongol period was also fecund in terms of Muslim relations with
members of other faiths, as the empire brought together experts on Islam,
Buddhism, Christianity and Shamanism. ‘Ala’ al-Din al-Simnani (d. 1336), a
famous Sufi who was raised in the Ilkhanid guard, recorded his conversations
with Buddhist monks and Mongol shamans in the court of the Ilkhan Arghun
(r. 1284–91). He even concluded that the Dharma, Buddhist law, is tanta-
mount to shari‘a law. Sufi analogies between various religions and water in
different colours (i.e. essentially the same) are also reminiscent of the above-
mentioned Mongol outlook.
A fascinating manifestation of these interfaith contacts can be found in
Ilkhanid and Timurid art. For the first and last time in the history of Muslim
art, we find visual representations of Muhammad (and other prophets). In
these renderings, Muhammad is placed in Buddhist or Christian models. For
instance, the Prophet’s birth in the Compendium of Chronicles is based on the
Christian Nativity scene (see Figure 20.1). These portraits must have appealed
to the Chinggisids’ taste, as they surface in competing Sunni and Shi‘ite works
aimed at proselytizing the Mongols. Put differently, the missionary use of
visual culture that is characteristic of Buddhism was adopted in Muslim Iran,
where religious art merged Buddhist, Christian and Chinese elements.3
Another example of a royal conversion took place in China: Qubilai’s
adoption of Tibetan Buddhism under the influence of Phags Pa (1235–80), a
brilliant Tibetan monk. This religion, which was quite popular among
Ilkhanid and Chaghadaid rulers before their Islamization, further legitimized
Qubilai’s rule. Like many outside rulers of China before him, Qubilai was
presented as chakravartin – the ideal universal Buddhist king who turns the
wheel of Dharma. The specific attraction of Tibetan Buddhism, aside from its
political nature and shamanic magic and colours, was that it conspicuously
distinguished the Mongols from their Chinese subjects, while appealing to
the Tibetan and Uighur populace. Unlike the Mongols’ adoption of Tibetan
Buddhism in the sixteenth century or their conversion to Islam, embracing
Buddhism at this stage was a highly elitist phenomenon that won few souls
among the Mongol rank and file. In any event, the Chinggisids’ favourable
attitude towards Buddhism and tolerant outlook brought together Buddhists
of different cultural backgrounds and streams. For example, the description
of the faith in the Compendium of Chronicles includes elements of Chinese,
Tibetan, Uighur, and Kashmiri Buddhism. In Yuan China, Korean and

3 Johan Elverskog, Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road (Philadelphia, PA: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2010): 167–74.

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 michal biran

Japanese Buddhists also took part in this intra-faith exchange. Multiple

translations of Buddhist texts (mainly from Tibetan to Mongolian, Uighur
and Chinese) appeared in China and Central Asia. Furthermore, the artistic
and architectural forms of Tibetan Buddhism became integral components of
Yuan palaces. The Mongols oversaw the completion of Tibet’s unseating of
India as the centre of Buddhism, and the beginning of theocratic rule in
Tibet. Tibetan Buddhism remained an imperial cult even in Ming China
(1368–1644), and its standing only improved under the Manchu Qing dynasty
(1644–1911), which presented its emperors as incarnations of Chinggis Khan
and Qubilai. The main spiritual competition on the steppe during the post-
Mongol era pitted Islam against Tibetan Buddhism.4
In contrast, plagued by doctrinal schism, stressing exclusivity, less adept in
magic and expecting the khans to accept the pope’s superiority, Christianity
failed, despite intensive missionary efforts, to translate the freedom and
access into new territories under the Chinggisids into durable achievements.

Economic exchange
Similar to the cultural sphere, the Mongols cultivated economic ties that
extended well beyond the empire’s borders. They inherited, invigorated, and
extended various trade routes as well as sundry means for resource extrac-
tion and exchange, including plunder, asset redistribution, taxation or tribute,
and gift giving. Not only did the Mongols provide security and transportation
infrastructure, but they were also active participants in trade as both invest-
ors and consumers.
Trade had long been essential to nomads, as their own resources did not
always cover all their needs and nomadic political culture requires leaders to
redistribute wealth among their followers. The very formation of nomad
states heightened the demand for precious metals, gems, and especially fine
cloth, for the newfangled regime needed these items to assert its authority.
Chinggis Khan was certainly aware of the benefits of commerce, which was
the premise behind his expansion into Central Asia. Likewise, Muslim and
Uighur merchants were among his earliest supporters. As the empire grew,
systemic plunder was the major source of luxury goods. Redistributed
among the Mongol elite, the khans and princes often chose to invest these
considerable fortunes in international trade. Consequently, they entrusted

4 Elverskog, Buddhism and Islam, 145–62.

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 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

their capital to agents, ortoqs (partners), most of whom were Muslims and
Uighurs. The ortoq was a trader (or trading company) acting on behalf of or
financed by a Mongol or other notable, in return for a share of the profits. To
a large degree, the revenues were expended on the lavish consumption that
typifies the nouveau riche. The establishment of Qara Qorum also induced
trade, for the resources of Mongolia could hardly support a city that was
large by steppe standards and the Chinggisids were ready to pay handsome
sums to enjoy the best of the sedentary world while remaining on the steppe.
Many traders eagerly exploited these opportunities, benefiting from the safe
roads and access to imperial post stations. As a result, international trade in
both luxury and bulk goods resumed soon after the conquests.
The slowing of Mongol expansion after the empire’s division accelerated
the expansion of trade. As taxation replaced booty as the main source of
revenue, the different Mongol governments continued to advance both local
and international commerce, which provided taxes, markets, profits, and
prestige. The khanates competed for commercial specialists, established the
infrastructure for transcontinental travel and played a significant role in both
trans-civilizational (East–West) and trans-ecological (North–South)
exchanges. In the far north, furs were obtained from Siberia and Manchuria
by dint of traditional barter arrangements and tributary relationships. At the
centre, Chinggisid royal courts were undergirded by redistribution, namely
rulers lavishing goods that they extracted from the sedentary populace on
their retinues and collaborators. Mongol capitals in Azerbaijan, the Volga
region and North China became the hubs of international markets, so that
trade routes shifted northwards. New urban centres of exchange materialized
along the Silk Roads in Central Asia, and particularly in the Volga region.
The overland routes flourished during the united empire period, and
picked up again in the first half of the fourteenth century, after the 1304
peace between the Mongol khanates. Yet the maritime routes also thrived,
especially from the 1280s onward, due to the Mongol takeover of the Song
dynasty, not least its busy ports, and the enmity between the Yuan and the
Mongol princes in Central Asia, which encouraged the shift from land to sea.
South China’s ports, notably Quanzhou (in modern Fujian), became centres
of international trade that reached far beyond the empire’s borders, attracting
merchants from India, the Muslim world, Southeast Asia and Europe. The
main axes of exchange were between South China – the terminus for goods
from East and Southeast Asia – and India; and between the latter and the
Persian Gulf or Red Sea. From there, the cargos continued either by land to
Iran, Iraq, Anatolia and Europe (both eastern and western) or via the

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 michal biran

maritime routes through Egypt and the Mediterranean to Europe or from

Aden to the shores of East Africa. Shorter sea routes catered to the lively
slave trade between the Golden Horde’s ports on the Black Sea and Egypt,
involving Muslim, Italian and Byzantine traders. The maritime and overland
routes were often closely linked: the Black Sea ports serviced luxury goods
arriving from the East over continental routes and caravans headed inland
from the Indian coast during seasons unsuited for sailing. This extensive
network, indeed, connected the entire Old World. Furthermore, sophisti-
cated market-driven exchange prevailed in the more developed economies of
the south. For example, Yuan workshops imported cobalt from northern
Europe in order to produce blue and white porcelain, which was in high
demand throughout the Muslim world. Likewise, the Ilkhanid court’s fiscal
policy took into account currency exchanges and bullion flows that ranged
from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. Yuan paper money was backed
by silver, and much of the Song dynasty’s silver reserves reached westwards
through the ortoqs. In fact, the period spanning the 1280s and 1360s – from the
conquest of Song China to the fall of the Yuan – bore witness to a sharp rise
in the use of silver across Eurasia, from England to Bengal and North Africa.
Uncoined silver became the standard unit for pricing transactions throughout
Eurasia, even when paid by other means.5
The key non-Mongol players in this global network were the Indian
kingdoms and the Italian city-states. The latter established permanent,
government-backed colonies in Caffa and Tana on the Black Sea and in
Ilkhanid Tabriz, while many Italian adventurers and entrepreneurs (the best
known of whom is Marco Polo) embarked on private ventures further east.
Apart from commerce, taxation and booty, several other institutions
underpinned economic exchange both within and outside the empire. The
Mongol system of appanages linked up the various khanate economies: After
the empire’s dissolution, most princes had appanages in other Chinggisid
realms. The proceeds from these estates were collected by the local khanate,
sometimes under the supervision of the owner’s representatives, and trans-
ferred to the beneficiary. However, the revenues were frozen in the event of
a war between the two domains. For instance, when Chapar b. Qaidu, the
Ogedeid prince, ended a forty-year conflict by submitting to the Yuan in 1310,
he received the dormant profits from his father’s Chinese appanages.

5 Kuroda Akinobu, ‘The Eurasian Silver Century, 1276–1359: Commensurability and

Multiplicity’, Journal of Global History 4 (2009): 245–69.

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 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

Another form of exchange was gift giving, an integral part of any diplo-
matic mission. These sort of embassies, which Chinese sources viewed as
tributary delegations, brought their hosts exotic items (e.g. jewellery,
hunting cheetahs, and beautiful slaves), frequently combining statecraft with
business, private and/or governmental. In 1297–8, for example, the Ilkhan
Ghazan dispatched Fakhr al-Din al-Tibbi, a merchant from Kish (an island in
the Persian Gulf), to Yuan on a threefold mission: to advance diplomatic
objectives; to collect the ruler’s appanage revenues; and to invest 100,000
gold dinars. Needless to say, Fakhr al-Din concomitantly pursued his own
business opportunities.
The thriving international exchange survived the fall of the Ilkhanate
(1335), as the trade routes merely shifted to the Golden Horde. However,
the Yuan collapse (1368) on the heels of the Black Plague in Europe and the
Middle East, which coincided with upheavals in the Golden Horde, seriously
undermined the Mongol international system of trade.

The legacy of Mongol statecraft

Until a few decades ago, even scholars commonly viewed the Mongol period
as a short and bloody interlude that either left no impact on Eurasian history
or was responsible for all the troubles that befell the empire’s conquered
civilizations from that period on. It was easy to overlook the Chinggisids’
impact because they did not leave behind an ethnic culture, language, or
religion of their own, but a complex and heterogeneous imperial culture.
Moreover, they bequeathed a different institutional legacy to each of the
various civilizations that they encountered. The deepest imprint was on
regions where they ruled the longest and those without a strong indigenous
tradition of a centralized state, namely Central Asia and Russia. A certain
institutional imprint is also perceptible in China, Iran and even beyond the
empire’s limits, primarily in the Muslim world. Finally, a distinction must be
drawn between the practical use of Mongol institutions and embracing
Chinggisid political ideology.
Mongol imperial rule left its mark on subsequent Eurasian empires, both
steppe and sown, that is, both nomadic pastoralists and settled agricultural-
ists. Creative manipulations notwithstanding, the Chinggisid principle, the
basic tenet of Mongol ideology according to which only descendants of
Chinggis Khan were eligible for supreme rulership, remained valid in Central
Asia until the eighteenth century, influencing monarchical behaviour and
social hierarchies in Qing China, Mughal India, Muscovy and even the

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 michal biran

Ottoman Empire. The ever-evolving Yasa played a significant role in the

Muslim world, despite various glaring contradictions with Islamic law. The
Mongol institution of the postal system was adopted in Ming and Qing
China, Safavid Iran and Muscovy; the empire’s military organization was
adhered to in Ming China and Muscovy (up to the rise of firearms); Chinese
provincial borders date back to Yuan times; and the empire’s commercial
taxation and monetary policies continued to be implemented in Russia, Iran
and Central Asia.
Geopolitically, the Mongols relocated the capitals of the khanates towards
the northeast, perhaps on account of the nomads’ preference for residing
closer to the steppe: the Chinese capital was transferred from Kaifeng and
Hangzhou to Beijing; in the eastern Islamic world, it moved from Baghdad to
Tabriz (in Azerbaijan); Kiev first gave way to Saray (southeast of Kiev) and
ultimately to Moscow (northeast yet again); and in Central Asia, Balasaghun
(in Kyrgyzstan) ceded to the Almaliq region (in northern Xinjiang). While
Azerbaijan retained its importance up to the end of the sixteenth century and
Samarkand superseded Almaliq in Central Asia by the late 1300s, the pre-
eminence of Beijing and Moscow remains unchallenged.
Furthermore, the Mongols revived the notion of Iran as a distinct political
entity within the Muslim world. In China, they created a unified entity that
remained undivided throughout the later imperial period and laid the foun-
dation for a multi-ethnic polity, which also controlled large swaths of
nomadic lands. Similarly, they turned a group of city-states into the nucleus
of a huge Russian empire. With respect to Central Asia, the main effect of the
Mongol period was a major ethnic reconfiguration: Mongol population
movements led to the disappearance of various established steppe people,
such as the Khitans, Tanguts, Uighurs and Qipchaqs, and the emergence of
new collectivities, such as the Uzbeks, Qazakhs and Tatars, who became the
modern Central Asian Muslim peoples.

Conclusion
The nomadic Mongols embarked upon an unprecedented mobilization of
peoples, goods and ideas to forge the largest contiguous empire the world
has known. In so doing, they bolstered Eurasian integration and broadened
the horizons of their subjects and neighbours. Mongol nomadic culture had
an enormous impact on Eurasian exchange under their auspices. While
adhering to the legacy of former nomadic empires, the Chinggisids faced a
much more complex set of problems, for they not only ruled over the steppe,

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 The Mongol Empire & inter-civilizational exchange

but over centres of the sedentary civilizations as well. Taking advantage of

personnel, institutions and imperial concepts from both East and West, the
Mongols developed an imperial administration and culture that merged their
indigenous norms with various elements of their subjects’ cultures, especially
those of the Muslims and Chinese, thereby creating sophisticated means for
ruling both steppe and sown. These means continued to stand at the disposal
of large Eurasian political units well into the early modern era, and eventu-
ally led to the division of the steppe between Muscovy and Qing China at the
expense of the nomads.
That said, the Chinggisids’ legacy transcended the continental empires. By
advancing long-distance commercial and financial exchanges, improving its
maritime prowess, forming new collectivities, and ratcheting up the ‘con-
nectivity’ between different regions, the Mongol Empire ushered in the early
modern period. As Samuel Adshead puts it, ‘if Europe came to dominate the
world, it was because Europe first perceived there was a world to domin-
ateʼ.6 When Columbus set out on his first voyage in 1492, his principal
objective was to find the land of the ‘Great Khan’ that emerges from the
Book of Marco Polo, whom he ardently admired. Against this backdrop, our
globalized world can be viewed as a progeny of the Mongols’ imperial
enterprise.

further reading
Adshead, Samuel A. M. Central Asia in World History. New York, NY: St Martinʼs Press,
1993.
Aigle, Denise, ed. L’Iran face à la domination mongole: Études. Teheran: Institut Français de
Recherche en Iran, 1997.
Akasoy, Anna, Charles Burnett and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, eds. Islam and Tibet: Interactions
along the Musk Routes. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.
Allsen, Thomas T. Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of
Islamic Textiles. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Khan Möngke in China, Russia, and the Islamic
Lands, 1251–1259. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987.
Amitai, Reuven. The Mongols in the Islamic Lands: Studies in the History of the Ilkhanate.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.
Amitai, Reuven and Michal Biran, eds. Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the
Sedentary World. Leiden: Brill, 2005.

6 Samuel A. M. Adshead, Central Asia in World History (New York: St Martin’s Press,
1993): 77.

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