Economically the tribal unit was optimal for a pastoral-nomadic group, but Chinggis brought all the tribes together into one confederation, with all its loyalty placed in himself. This was indeed a grand achievement in a country as vast as Mongolia, an area approximately four times the size of France.
Once Chinggis had succeeded in bringing the Mongols together, in , a meeting of the so-called Khuriltai an assemblage of the Mongol nobility gave their new leader the title of "Chinggis Khan": Khan of All Between the Oceans. The other Mongol states were the Chagatai khanate in Central Asia ca.
The Mongols were remarkably quick in transforming themselves from a purely nomadic tribal people into rulers of cities and states and in learning how to administer their vast empire.
They readily adopted the system of administration of the conquered states, placing a handful of Mongols in the top positions but allowing former local officials to run everyday affairs. This clever system allowed them to control each city and province but also to be in touch with the population through their administrators.
The seat of the Great Khanate in Dadu Beijing was the center of the empire, with all its pomp and ceremony, whereas the three semi-independent Central and western Asian domains of the Chagatai, the Golden Horde, and the Ilkhanids were connected through an intricate network that crisscrossed the continent. Horses , once a reliable instrument of war and conquest, now made swift communication possible, carrying written messages through a relay system of stations.
A letter sent by the emperor in Beijing and carried by an envoy wearing his paiza , or passport, could reach the Ilkhanid capital Tabriz, some 5, miles away, in about a month. The political unification of Asia under the Mongols resulted in active trade and the transfer and resettlement of artists and craftsmen along the main routes. This explains why nearly all the cities that surrendered without even token resistance received relatively good treatment.
There are no signs in Genghis of a mindless or psychopathic cruelty; everything was done for a purpose. It is important not to judge him by 21st-century standards but to see him in the context of general behaviour in the 13th century. He exceeded in degree but not in kind the other killers of the age. Moral judgments are of little help in understanding his importance. Julius Caesar is supposed to have caused a million deaths during his year conquest of Gaul, but the Caesar that predominates in the public consciousness is the statesman, military genius and superb writer of prose, not the butcher.
The pro-Genghis camp asserts that it was as a result of his activities that China was brought into contact with the Islamic world and thus with the west, since the west had already made its presence felt in the Muslim world during the crusades. After the Mongol propensity for trade rather than war gradually increased, particularly when Genghis himself was won over to the idea that agriculture generated more wealth than nomadism.
It was said that you could travel from Palestine to Mongolia with a gold plate on your head and not be molested, but the journey was still an arduous one because of primitive transport. Even in the halcyon days of the Pax Mongolica, it took a traveller days to get from Turkey to Beijing.
Yet the Mongols undoubtedly opened up the world. Until there was in the west a narrow European viewpoint that saw the world virtually end at Jerusalem. The journeys of the Franciscans Carpini and Rubruck, and the more famous one of Marco Polo and that of the Chinese traveller Rabban Bar Sauma in the opposite direction , cleared the way for new vistas. Learned people finally got a sense of the size of the world and its population. The art of Iran was influenced by Uighur and Chinese motifs.
From China to the Islamic world and Europe came the knowledge of firearms, silk cultivation, ceramics and woodblock printing. In fact, on his expedition to Central Asia Chinggis was accompanied by Changchun, a Daoist sage from China, who kept an account of his travels with his Mongol patron. Changchun's first-hand account has become one of the major primary sources on Chinggis Khan and the Mongols.
The creation of the first Mongol written language was another legacy of Chinggis Khan. In , even before he gained the title of "Chinggis Khan," Chinggis assigned one of his Uyghur retainers to develop a written language for the Mongols based upon the Uyghur script.
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