However, the new rulers were greatly impressed by the long-established traditions of Iran, with its prosperous urban centers and thriving economy, and they quickly assimilated the local culture.
The Mongol influence on Iranian and Islamic culture gave birth to an extraordinary period in Islamic art that combined well-established traditions with the new visual language transmitted from eastern Asia. Carboni, Stefano, and Qamar Adamjee. Amitai-Preiss, Reuven, and David O.
Morgan, eds. The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy. Leiden: Brill, Carboni, Stefano, and Komaroff, Linda, eds. He is a legendary figure, perhaps second in fame only to Jesus Christ, and in popular imagery is the very avatar of savagery and barbarism. The real Genghis, however, was a genuine phenomenon. The Mongol empire covered 12 million contiguous square miles — an area as large as Africa. In contrast, the Roman empire was about half the size of the continental USA.
Genghis — and his sons waged major wars on two fronts simultaneously and conquered Russia in winter — both feats that eluded Napoleon and Hitler.
How was this possible for a land of 2 million illiterate nomads? The answer was a quantum leap in military technology, which brought mounted archery to its acme. As the military historian Basil Liddell Hart pointed out, Genghis was a military innovator in two important respects: he realised that cavalry did not need to have infantry backup, and he grasped the importance of massed artillery barrages.
Most historians claim that this astonishing achievement was the result of massacre and bloodshed not seen again until the 20th century.
One school of thought would make the Mongols culpable for every military atrocity that has ever occurred; the opposing one would make them harbingers of world peace and security, beset by a few regrettable excesses. Military historian Sir John Keegan made Genghis responsible for the savagery of the Spanish Reconquista against the Moors in the late 15th century and their massacre of the Aztecs and Incas.
These divergent modern views are a projection across the centuries of diametrically opposed views of the Mongols entertained in the 13th century. For the English chronicler Matthew Paris, the Mongols were Gog and Magog aroused from their slumber; they were the demons of Tartarus, the myrmidons of Satan himself.
For the great Franciscan thinker Roger Bacon, the Mongols represented the triumph of science and philosophy over ignorance. Since one version of Genghis Khan is that of a cruel despot who raised mountains of human skulls, we should first ask: how many died as a result of his wars and conquests?
The answer can only be guesswork, however sophisticated, for three main reasons. The tactics and military might Genghis used in the Western Xia region continued as he went on to conquer the larger and more powerful Jin Dynasty in CE, beginning a year war known as the Mongol-Jin War.
Long before the Mongol invasions, Jin leaders took vassal tribute from the Mongolian tribes along their shared border. These leaders even encouraged disputes between these nomadic tribes in order to bolster their own power along their northern border.
However, the tides for this powerful dynasty decidedly shifted when the war started during the first Mongol invasion. Instead, he sent a messenger to Mongols. But the messenger defected and told the Mongols that the Jin Dynasty army was waiting for them on the other side of the Badger Pass.
This was where the Mongols massacred thousands of Jin troops and began a long and arduous war that would take a heavy toll on the region.
This forced the Emperor Xuanzong to move his capital south, abandoning the northern half of his kingdom to the Mongols. The last major battle between the Jin and the Mongols was the siege of Caizhou in CE, which marked the collapse of the Jin Dynasty. The years of war took a heavy toll on the population of the Jin Dynasty, as it had in the Western Xia.
Mongol warriors were reported to take the livestock from the small towns and villages along their path and kill the owners. Despite the hardship of war and the siege and heavy cavalry tactics utilized by Mongol forces, the unifying and centralizing effects of the Mongol Empire created an expansive trade route and opened up these far eastern regions to western influence and goods.
More stability along the trade route known as the Silk Road allowed goods and ideas to travel long distances and established a connection between eastern European principalities like the Russian territories. Under Genghis Khan, the Mongols, who began using catapaults and gunpowder in their invasions, conquered the Kara-Khitan Khanate and the Khwarazmian Empire.
Genghis Khan created an efficient military regime after his unifying rise to power in the nomadic Mongol territories of northeastern Asia in CE. These forces were no longer grouped by tribe or familial affiliation, but rather were organized into armies of multiples of ten soldiers that could be sent where needed in the name of Mongol expansion. Genghis Khan sent forces in every direction, including westward into central Asia. While he was fighting the Western Xia and Jin Dynasties in the east, he was also attempting to gain more land to the west in the Kara-Khitan Khanate and the Khwarazmian Empire, regions that comprise modern-day Iran, Iraq, and Uzbekistan.
This alienated him from most of his people, creating ideal circumstances for a takeover by Genghis Khan. Relations with the Khwarazms would quickly break down, leading to the Mongol invasion of that territory in Genghis Khan saw the potential advantage in Khwarazmia as a commercial trading partner using the Silk Road, and he sent a caravan to establish official trade ties with the empire. However, a Khwarazmian governor attacked the caravan, claiming that it contained spies.
Genghis Khan sent a second group of ambassadors to meet the Shah himself instead of the governor. The Shah had all the men shaved and the Muslim ambassador beheaded and sent his head back with the two remaining ambassadors. Outraged, Genghis Khan organized one of his largest and most brutal invasion campaigns, fought by , soldiers in three divisions.
He left a commander and troops in China, designated his successors to be his family members, and set out for Khwarazmia. His invasion of Khwarazmia would last from CE.
His son Jochi led the first division into the northeast, and the second division under Jebe marched secretly to the southeast to form, with the first division, a pincer attack on Samarkand. He died on August 18, , just before the Xi Xia were crushed. Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much land as any other person in history, bringing Eastern and Western civilizations into contact in the process. His descendants, including Ogodei and Khubilai, were also prolific conquerors, taking control of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the rest of China, among other places.
The Mongols even invaded Japan and Java before their empire broke apart in the 14th century. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
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