Mongolian Empire

Mongolian Empire

Fun Facts

• A Mongol was trained to ride horses by the age of 3.
• Most Mongol shock cavalry forced to wear silk shirts beneath their heavy armor.
• Genghis Khan was said to be born clenching a blood clot in his right hand.
• Around 8% of men from Asia are descendants from Khan.
• Khan's armies may have slaughtered more people than Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler combined, which is estimated at 40 million people, which created a man-made climate change by getting rid of 700 million tons of carbon in the atmosphere and cooling the earth.

Jakob Whaley

Religion

• The Mongol people were very tolerant of religions during the early Empire and typically represented several religions at the same time.
• Their 3 main religions were Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam.
• The Mongol people themselves had their own religion called, Shamanism, but it did not gain much poplarity outside of the culture.
• To avoid conflict among his people, Genghis Khan set up an institution that ensured complete religious freedom.
• Initially there were very few places to worship, because of their nomadic lifestyle. That was until Ogedei, Genghis's successor, built houses, and buildings of worship for all religions in Mongolia's capital of Karakorum.

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Military

• Their main tactics were spy tactics that sometimes took months to do, coordinated attacks that included ambushes, hit-and-runs, and fake defeats, and also rapid communication.
• They carried multiple weapons at a time consisting of: a battle ax, a curved sword, and two types of a recurved bow, one for rapid fire on horseback, and one for a ground position, and long distance.
• Their horses played a huge role in their army. The horses were fast, small but sturdy, had great stamina, and did very well in extreme conditions, making them very reliable.

Ways of Living

• Living a nomadic lifestyle, they were constantly on the move, for new and better land for them, and their herds of animals.
• The Mongolian people were mainly herdsmen, and traders, they herded sheep and would trade horses.
• They were called the "people who live in felt tents," because they lived in felt tents called a yurt.
• They could break down these yurts and carry them on horseback, making it very easy for the nomadic people.

Early History

Pax Mongolica

• Coined as a parallel to the Pax Romana, The Pax Mongolica (Peace of the Mongols) was the term for situation trade between China and Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries.
• Although it was not exactly all peaceful during this treaty, it kept relative peace and led to an increase in trade, as well as an increase in awareness between distant nations.
• In short, it helped the Mongol Empire administer political order over a very large area of land.

Genghis Khan

• The Mongolian empire was formed in 1206 A.D. by the unification of multiple nomadic tribes, and several small countries, including: Merkits, Naimans, Mongols, Keraits, Tatars, and Uyghurs.
• The forming of the Mongolian empire was done under the rule of a man named Temujin, who is more commonly known as Genghis Khan.
• Genghis Khan was proclaimed the leader of Mongolia in 1206 due to him uniting all of these tribes/counties, and ruled until his death in 1227.
• The empire originated in the steppes of China, and later became the largest contiguous land empire, ruling over 9.2 million square miles of land.

• Genghis Khan was born in 1162 near the border between modern day Mongolia and Siberia.
• His life growing up was very unpredictable and violent because of all of the fighting and stealing occuring with the nomadic tribes on the Asian Steppe.
• When he was 10 years old his father was killed by an enemy tribe, and following his fathers death, his own clan deserted his family so they would not have to take care of his family.
• He married at age 16, but had many wives.
• At the age of 20, he began to build a large army with the intent to destroy individual tribes in Northeast Asia and unite them under his rule; he was very successful.