Mongolian Nomadic Society

A Reconstruction of the 'Medieval' History of Mongolia

Bat-Ochir Bold

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136824807
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Until the collapse of the socialist system in Mongolia in 1990, Mongolian social sciences was fundamentally schematised in accordance with the prevailing political ideology of socialism, considering the country's history in the theoretical framework of historical materialism, the theory of socio-economic formation, and the feudalism model. Here, however, the author adopts a fresh approach and criticises the theoretical adaptation of the feudalism concept to nomadic culture while treating the history of Mongolia in view of the structural and developmental particularities of nomadic society. The book shows the economic conditions and everyday life of mobile livestock keeping, tribal and political-administrative organisation and the social strata of nomadic society during the 13th-19th centuries, demonstrating that development of nomadic societies in Central Asia cannot and should not be evaluated in accordance with European norms.

1. STARTING POINT FOR VIEWING THE HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS

WAYS OF APPROACHING MONGOLIAN HISTORY BY MEANS OF SOURCE MATERIAL AND RESEARCH

The history of Mongolia from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries represents a period which has long been of interest to specialists of Mongolian studies and which has been extensively researched. This does not mean, however, that historians have been able to reach a common opinion concerning this period. There are still a great many of unexplained questions that arise not so much from the scanty empirical material available as from the differing criteria of evaluation. An analysis of these differing means of evaluation is a prerequisite for an exact understanding of the character of the course of Mongolian history. In describing a feature of history, the historian is of course guided by his own objectives. The various viewpoints for the description of the period of the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries in Mongolia are further influenced by two factors. The first is spatial: when a people leaves deep tracks in the history of another people, the formers development must be taken into account in the historiography of the latter. The second factor is temporal: with the emergence of a new politico-historical phase of a people, the way of viewing historical phenomena often changes. On account of these factors the dynamics of this period of Mongolian history is complicated and multi-layered, and it is precisely this which will be the subject of our research.

One of the main causes of the plurality of opinions concerning this period, and in general of the interest in Mongolian history, is the fact that at the start of the thirteenth century there arose a unified, independent Mongolian Empire which had a great influence not only on the further course of Mongolian history but also on the history of other peoples.

The Mongolian Empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was vast – it extended from what is today Korea to Hungary, encompassed the entire Asian continent up to India, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. It existed in this size for more than a hundred years and in some regions for even longer as partial or successor empire. The main difference between the Mongols and earlier conquerors is that no other previous nomad empire has controlled the Asian inner steppe and vast regions of settled peoples.

From the viewpoint of the historian, this had a significant consequence: the history of the Mongolian Empire was considerably better documented than its predecessors. The reason for this is that the settled peoples wrote about the Mongols as part of their own history. Research into the Mongolian Empire has therefore a special character. A complex problem arises from the number of sources – in Mongolian, Chinese, Persian, Arabic, Russian, French, Latin, Turkish, Japanese, Armenian, Georgian, Tibetan and other languages. No single person is able to read more than a fraction of the available sources in the original. In addition to this there is also the cultural problem. The medieval systems in China, in the Islamic countries, in Europe and amongst the nomadic peoples differ from one another considerably. Historical accounts have therefore differing traditional starting points, backgrounds and objectives and are marked by differing mentalities.

As regards the influence of the temporal factor on the judgement of historians, we believe that it is necessary to concentrate on nuances of change in an evaluation of the development of Mongolian society; these nuances arose from changes in global development and their effect on intellectual life. Focusing our attention on just a few aspects, it appears that the eighteenth century was one of the periods when the approach to Mongolian history adopted in European literature began to change (Krader 1966: 21–22; Gol’man 1988: 5), while in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries, a cliché notion of Mongols as plunderers, barbarians and monsters prevailed. This was connected in general with the start of modern scientific thought and on the whole with the growing interest in the Orient, and in particular in Mongolia, subsequent to centuries of lack of contact. This process was rooted in the development of capitalist politico-economic principles in Europe. At the start of the twentieth century, social consciousness was moulded by the emergence of two fundamentally different systems of society. There thus developed two mutually exclusive theoretical and methodological approaches in the social sciences. Due to these approaches, differing evaluations of Mongolian history arose. Thus research into the history of Mongolia, in particular the theoretical interpretation of the development of Mongolia, has been more or less an arena of ideological argument. For this reason, theoretical consideration of Mongolian history has contained more ideological discussion than scholarly research until the present time.

Chinese sources

Since ancient times, Chinese historians have concerned themselves with the nomadic peoples of Central Asia. Ancient Chinese chronicles contain a wealth of information relating to the nomads in the north of China. There are two reasons why these chronicles deal so extensively with the nomads.

First, the nomadic peoples in the Mongolian part of Central Asia were at times under the rule of Chinese emperors and at times ruled themselves or even the whole of China – for example the Northern Wei (Xianbei: A.D. 386–534), Liao (the Khitans: 916–1125), Jin (Jurchens: 1115–1234), Yuan (the Mongols: 1271–1368) and Qing (the Manchus: 1644–1911) dynasties. Some of these ‘official’ historical chronicles, such as ‘History of the Song’, ‘History of the Liao’ and ‘History of the J’in’, were thus compiled under Chinese sovereignty and even by Mongolian historians, and some, such as ‘History of the Yuan’, were compiled under Mongolian sovereignty.

Second, since nomadic movements southwards and eastwards were regarded as threatening by the Chinese, there were usually historians and scholars at the royal court of each Chinese dynasty who were charged with recording events deemed important or suspicious. Such records are called Shihlu and/or Qijuzhu (veritable records). The official historical chronicles have a common structure which was first established by Sima Qian (145–86 B.C.) and Ban Gu (A.D. 32–93). The histories of the main nomadic tribes living in or around China and their chieftains were usually documented in the volumes liezhuan (biographies) or waiguo (foreign countries). This Chinese administrative practice of compiling such governmental reports continued until the Chinese Manchu Qing Empire. V. S. Taskin believed with justification that:

[Chinese] historical works have been vividly compared to shining mirrors which bring the truth of past history before one’s eyes. Their task was to give correct answers based on experience to constantly emerging problems of importance to the state…

It is not surprising that Chinese historians, for practical reasons, mainly turned their attention to military-political and diplomatic re-lations with China’s neighbours, and thus various aspects of the actual lives of these peoples were for them peripheral and of minor importance (Taskin 1984: 11).

Very little synthesis arose out of the ‘veritable records’. Chinese bureaucracy, just the prevailing taxation system, was immovable and normally little influenced by the changing of dynasties. Each new dynasty marked its entrance and the definitive exit of the old dynasty by appropriating the official history of the predecessor. Much the same applies to Chinese history of recent times.¹

Chinese sources of the period with which we are dealing here, can be classified into three groups:

• official dynastic history
• legal sources
• writings in the form of records (Trauzettel 1986: 11–13)

Official dynastic history

The most important contemporary source in Chinese concerning the early history of the Mongols is the ‘History of the Yuan Dynasty’ (Yuan-shi)². This is an official dynastic history compiled in 1369–70, immediately after the expulsion of the Mongols from China, by a commission of historians after the pattern of the Song history. It was written in Peking by at first 16 and then, in 1370, by a further 14 Chinese historians under the direction of Song Lian (1310–81) and Wang Wei (1322--73), who were scholars of the royal court (Dalai 1992: 19). Sources in both Mongolian and Chinese were used. The main source for this chronicle was the historical book written in the period of the Yuan dynasty concerning the 13 Mongolian kings, Shih-lu (True history), which General Sui Da of the newly founded Min state had obtained as booty during the expulsion of the Mongols. In addition, in the year 1370, 20 historians under the direction of Wan Wie were sent north into Mongolia in order to obtain further material for the second version of the chronicle (Mingshi, ch. 282: in Dalai 1992: 174).

In spite of this, Mongolian sources were somewhat neglected in the drafting of the Yuanshi. Since Chinese aversion to the Mongols was still very strong in the period of the writing of this work, Mongolian history as well as Mongolian sources were accordingly treated with disdain (Cin’ Yui-fu 1957: 113). For example, Mongolian scholars and officials who were well known at the time and who had carried out documentation in the course of the Yuan dynasty, such as Kharkhasun, Bayan, Cagaan, Togoon, Ariun, Shaazgay, Alintamir, Dashkhayan, Tugtumur, etc., are not mentioned in the Yuanshi. This neglect is also to a certain extent apparent with regard to valuable Chinese sources concerning the history of the Mongols. For example, the Chinese eyewitness accounts of Peng Daya, Chao Hong, Chang Chun and Chan De-hui, which were at the time already known, are scarcely considered in the Yuanshi.

Legal documentation

The first Chinese legal sources for the history of the Mongols in the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries originate from the Yuan period. The Yuan dynasty was actually founded and governed by the Mongols. There had been a long tradition of Mongolian khaans³ creating state laws after the manner of the Mongolian statute book of Genghis Khaan, the Great Yasa (Ikh Yasag), which had been used since the start of the thirteenth century. In the case of the Yuan dynasty, however, this was unrealisable for various reasons. Because the dynasty comprised many and to a large extent settled Chinese peoples, it was necessary for the Mongolian kings to form their laws after the patterns of traditional Chinese legal ordinances in order to govern successfully. In addition, Khublai Khaan was very much influenced by Chinese culture. After the death of his father Tului, Genghis Khaan’s son, he took over, at the age of 21, Tului’s possessions of ten thousand subject families in Xinzhou as well as his mothers possessions in what is today Zhending in Hebei province, where he remained from this time. On the advice of his trusted Chinese minister, Yao Shu, Khublai had the first legislation revised in accordance with Chinese tradition. The most important laws dating from the Yuan period are the ‘New Ordinances from the Zhi Yuan Government’ (Zhi Yuan Xinge), the ‘State Codex of the Sacred Government of the Great Yuan Empire’ (Da Yuan shengzheng guochao dianzhang’, often abbreviated to ‘Yuan dianzhang’) and the ‘Regulations in Systematic Order from the State Book of the Great Yuan Empire’ (Da Yuan tongzih Tiaoge).

Legislation of the Manchu-Chinese Qing Empire provides legal sources concerning Mongolia dating from a later period. Even the first Manchu-Chinese rulers decreed laws for the Mongolian region conquered in 1632, which were originally intended for Inner Mongolia but later, in the middle of the seventeenth century, were extended to Outer Mongolia as well. In 1696 Emperor Kangxi (1662–1722) unified all single laws decreed by his predecessors into a codex. They were further revised into the Menggu lüli (Statute for Mongolia) in the year 1789 and into the Lifanyuan zeli (Statute Book, established by all highest Command, of the Ministry of the Government of the Outer Provinces) in the years 1815, 1826, 1832.

Writing in the form of records

The third group of sources consists of all other published works that were not government commissions, e.g. travel reports such as ‘Survey Report on the Black Tartars’ (Hei Da shilüe) by Peng Daya and ‘Complete Description of the Mongol-Tartars’ (Meng Da beilu) by Chao Hong⁴. Together with the Secret History of the Mongols [hereafter abbreviated SHM] (c. 1227–64), the Xiyouji … ‘Notes of a Journey (of the Taoist monk Changchun) to the West’ (1228) and the Shengwu qinzheng lu… ‘Reports on the Personal Campaigns of the Emperor Shengwu (Genghis Khaan)’ published in the period 1260–85, these two works are considered the most significant and extensive early sources concerning the history of Mongolia until the end of the government of Ogadai ( 1229–41 ) (Haenisch 1980: vii). The authors practised the traditional Chinese style of report. In this connection W. Banck writes,

To what extent were the authors committed to a standardised, formal, almost stereotyped Chinese tradition of reporting about foreign peoples? To a tradition which was possibly first established by Sima Qian’s … Shiji … and consequently became more or less obligatory, and which was retained in the early dynastic histories as well as in Ma Duanlin’s … Wenxian tong-kao … and the great encyclopaedias of the Min period until recent times? To a generally accepted and only rarely broken tradition which frequently aided the perpetuation of typically Chinese cliché ideas rather than enabling an objective portrayal free of a genre-bound form and of ethnocentrally conditioned prejudice? (In Haenisch 1980: xx–xxi).

Persian sources

In West Asia, large territories of what are today Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Caucasus were under the direct control of the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. For this reason there is an abundance of sources amongst the Near Eastern peoples concerning Mongolian history, not only relating to the period of the Il Khanate in West Asia but also to earlier periods. These sources are Persian, Syrian, Armenian, Georgian and Arabic, of which the Persian are the most extensive and detailed.

Persia did not develop an institutionalised official way of writing history as can be seen in official Chinese sources. There did, however, develop a particular ‘official history’ in the period of Mongolian rule. Most of these chronicles were, even if they are not in all cases of an official nature, to a certain extent commissioned by Mongolian rulers and thus their authors were obliged to take into account the viewpoint of the ruling class and to portray its achievements. Perhaps the character of the Persian histories was partly the result of shock, since the Muslims of western Asia had hitherto not experienced anything comparable to the Mongol conquests.

The most important Persian historical works in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are:

• the ‘Classes under Nasir’ (Tabaqat-i Nasir), written in 1260 by Abu Umar Minhag ad-Din Utman Ibn Sirag ad-Din al-Guzgani (often abbreviated to Guzgani);
• the ‘History of the World Conquerors’ (Ta’rih-i gahán-gusái) written in 1252–60 by Alá ad-Din atá Matik al-Guvaini (often abbreviated to Guvaini);
• the ‘Collection of Histories’ (Gámi at-tawárih) written in 1301–11 by Rashid ad-Din Fadl Alláh; and
• the ‘Distribution of the Countries and the Course of the Ages’ (Tagziyatu ’I-amsár wa tagziyatu ’I-a sár) written in 1300–28 by Abd Alláh Ibn Fadl Alláh as-Sirázi (often abbreviated to Wassaf).

These four historians were all high-ranking government officials. The most significant of them was Rashid ad-Din, who for 20 years was the wazir of the Mongolian Il Khanate in Persia during the governments of Gahzan, Ulzeitu and Abu Said bagatur.

Guzgani was a Ghaznavid historian. He records, amongst other things, the report of the legate Baha ad-Din Razi whom the Khalif an-Nasir li-Din Allah (1180–1225) sent to Genghis Khaan in the year 1215 on the occasion of the Mongolian conquest of Peking, and describes the meeting of the two men as well as the destruction subsequently wrought by the Mongols. He wrote his work as an old man in the safe sanctuary of the Delhi sultanate and it is of particular importance since he was not obliged to temper his language regarding the Mongols. He had himself witnessed the horrors of Genghis’s invasions 40 years earlier.

Guvaini spent most of his life in the service of the Mongols, his last 25 years as Mongol governor of Baghdad. He wrote his historical work mostly between 1252–60 in the then capital of the Mongolian Empire, Kara-Korum, but was still working on it from 1260 in Baghdad after his appointment as governor. Although he did not experience the first invasions of the Mongols, he began describing events during the early Mongolian period, for which he had a wealth of information from Mongolia at his disposal. He himself had travelled twice to Mongolia and had gathered a good deal of historical material there. Thus we learn from him not only about the Mongol invasions of the Islamic lands but also about the previous dynasties in the territorities which formed the Mongolian Empire, such as Khar Khitai in Central Asia, the Uigurs further east, the Khwarazm-shahs in Persia and the Assassins subsequent to their emergence in Persia at the end of the eleventh century.

Rashid ad-Din (124...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Note on Transliteration
• Introduction
• 1. Starting-point for viewing the history of the Mongols
• 2. Economic conditions and their development
• 3. Socio-political organisation in the development of Mongolia
• 4. Social strata of Mongolian nomadic society
• 5. The effect of Lamaism on traditional Mongolian nomadic society
• 6. The dynamics of the development of Mongolian nomadic society
• Concluding remarks
• Notes
• List of People, Places and Terms
• References
• Index