Kevin Pirouzbakht
History F block
Mongol Empire Project

During my Journey to the Mongol Empire I heard, saw, and experienced many things. All the experiences I encountered made me view the Mongolians as bloodthirsty city-destroyers. Out of all the people I saw they were the harshest people I had ever seen. They kill people like they are animals, and if you don’t give up and surrender they will obliterate your kingdom. The things I heard and researched showed me even before there kingdom turned into a real kingdom they went around and if anyone would bother them they would get in a battle with them. At first the Mongols were nomads, and nomadic people are pastoralist, which means they herded domesticated animals. That also means they never settled in one place and they moved around, but usually they would follow a pattern. They traveled in clans and sometimes different clans came together to attack a settled enemy. In 1206 Temujin became Genghis Khan after he beat rival clan members one by one. For the next 20 years he conquered most of Asia. For a start he wanted to conquer China. He conquered the Jin Empire in 1211. The Battle of Zhoungdu was the Battle that the Mongols defeated the Jin Empire. The Mongols had few soldiers killed, but to show how harsh they were they killed almost all of the 6,000 troops the Jin Empire had. The war was fought in 1215. He then sent army to central Asia, and the Mongols destroyed one city after another, which were Utrar, Smarkand, Bukhara, and many more cities. If you refused to open your gates they would kill the entire population sometimes. Later Genghis Khan destroyed the Khwarazuan Dynasty, because they killed his people and refused to obey his order. He sent trade missions to the Khwarazuan Empire, but they taught they were spies, and they killed them and took the goods. Genghis ordered reparations, but the Shah refused to do so. Genghis got angry and he launched a force of 200,000 troops to invade the Khwarazuan Dynasty. In 1279 Kublai Khan conquered China after attacking them for several years. The Mongols destroyed Bukhara, Gurganj, and the capital of Khwarazuan Samarkand. The Shah fled and died few weeks later. The Mongols were so frightening some places surrendered before any war started because of the horror the Mongols brought.

 

 

Based on many things I experienced in my long journey the Mongols seemed like promoters of trade and connecters of east to west. I learned that before there empire came to be a real empire they were nomads and grouped in clans. Through my studies the Mongols encountered many interactions with the settled people, which often caused peaceful trade. They traded horses for grain, metal, cloth, and tea. From the 1200’s to 1300’s was the Mongol peacetime sometimes called the Pax Mongolica. During this time the Mongols had stability in law and across much of Asia. The Mongols guaranteed safety for travelers to move from one side of the empire to do the other side. At the Mongolian Empires peak they extended from Shanhaiguan in the east to Budapest in the west, which made it hard to keep that much of land safe, but the Mongols did during the Pax Mongolica period. With what I saw and heard the Mongols didn’t have many resources, so they needed lots of goods which meant they had to trade a lot to get their needed resources. On the Silk Road I saw the Mongols in trades involving pepper, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg, which came to the west. Trade between Europe Asia reached highs, and ideas and inventions traveled along with the trade goods. Gunpowder was one of the main things that traveled from China to Europe.  Traders transported Chinese silk and porcelain, which had high value in Europe and Western Asia. Other inventions were spread such as printing, the compass, paper currency, and playing cards. They invited foreign merchants to come visit China, and one of them was I Marco Polo. I visited China and saw Kublai Khan in the year of 1275. In those years I learned many languages and went to many government missions. Other popular people who made the trip to the Mongol empire was Rabban Bar Sauma and William of Rubruck. After serving for 17 years I left China and came back to Venice. All of experiences proved to me the Mongols were good people and promoters of trade.

The Mongols are viewed in many different views.  They are viewed in some cases as bloodthirsty city destroyers and in other cases promoters of trade and connecters of the west. They are viewed in different views, because of their inconsistency to be taking the same path for a long period of time. The Mongols are kind of like the Macedonia Empire of Alexander the Great. Alexander wasn’t favored to one plan, because he would conquer land and destroy them, but then he would let them keep there culture and mix the culture with his other cultures in his empire. He created the Hellenistic Culture, which was a mixture of Persian, Greek, Egyptian, and Indian cultures. The Mongols did not have one personality they had multiply even from before they were an empire and they were clans. When they were clans they kept moving and often got in battles with settled people and often became jealous when they saw the lives of rich settled people, and because of that they would sometimes go and rob them. On the other hand because they were always on the move they always were short on some material so they would trade there horses for some resources like grain and rice. When they were a empire they had there time of peace in the mid 1200’s to mid 1300’s, but they also had times of expansion and just annihilate cities.   

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